Occupational time: the case of UK social science contract researchers

Studies of how people experience and deal with occupational time within the higher education sector are limited. Drawing on material from the sociology of time and qualitative interviews, this paper examines how a group of UK social science contract researchers do so. Initially, the paper outlines two different kinds of time which order researchers working lives: linear and cyclical. This is followed by a portrayal of how researchers perceive the passage of their working time and the particular event-based temporal cycle within which they work. Various strategies for managing occupational time are then depicted and these are followed by an examination of some of the personal costs researchers suffer from inhabiting contract research time.